Page 159 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

CHAPTER 16

LEADERS ENERGIZE

THEIR PEOPLE

Each year in a small conference room right across the street from the White
House there are seventy-five to a hundred off-the-record lunches with very
prominent individuals from all walks of life. One of the questions I asked
White House Fellows alumni when I was gathering anecdotes for this book
was, “Who was the most memorable person who spoke to your White
House Fellowship class and why?” There were as many different answers
as there were Fellows, with one notable exception: Every Fellow I inter-
viewed from one recent class chose General David Petraeus, at that time
the commanding general of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, as the most
impressive speaker they heard all year. Petraeus’s question to the Fellows
was simple but unforgettable: “Are you the kind of leader that fills your
subordinates with energy, or do you suck the energy out of them?”
Without a doubt, General Petraeus is an authority on leadership
principles and ways to put them into practice to accomplish a mission. His
abilities and intellect have garnered worldwide praise and recognition. A
graduate of West Point with a Ph.D. from Princeton in international
relations, Petraeus was the top student in the U.S. Army’s Command and
General Staff College’s class of 1983. In 2007, Time magazine named this
soldier-scholar one of the most influential leaders and revolutionaries of the
year, and he was one of four runners-up for the Time Person of the Year.
In 2008 he was named “America’s most respected soldier” by the German
weekly magazine Der Spiegel. He was chosen 2007 Man of the Year by

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